BLU Products switches from ADUPS Chinese spyware to Google OTA app

posted by Cosmin V. / Dec 02, 2016, 12:51 PM

Following last month's debacle, BLU Products is announcing a shift in its software strategy. The US-based company, which got some attention from the press not long ago, has finally decided to go for Google's flawless OTA solution.

In a way, this doesn't really come as a surprise since BLU had been switching from the Chinese software coming pre-installed on its phones ordered from China for a couple of years now.

Unfortunately, the ADUPS solution that was proved to be a spyware sending data to Chinese servers, was the last piece of software that BLU hadn't replaced with another alternative.

The reason seems to be the fact that the makers of ADUPS, Shanghai Adups Technology, went rogue and hidden its software despite the fact that BLU specifically asked them not to put their app on their phones.

BLU CEO Sammy Ohev-Zion confirmed that his company has a correspondence with the Chinese company proving that they have violated their request.

We have an email history with Adups saying we did not want that functionality on our devices, and they violated our request. We are a hard-working, American, family-owned business, and we are the last people on Earth that would engage in anything that would abuse our hard-earned customer relationship.

Although BLU patched the ADUPS backdoor as soon as the security firm Kryptowire found it, U.S. customers' trust is hard to regain. BLU also announced that all its smartphones launched from December will have Google's OTA application pre-installed instead of the Chinese ADUPS solution.

Moreover, the company's CEO said that they won't be installing any other third-party apps where they don't have the source code and don't know exactly how it works.

Posts: 1297; Member since: Aug 31, 2016

posted on Dec 02, 2016, 1:28 PM 0

Posts: 1168; Member since: Oct 05, 2015

Here's to hoping that the really big Chinese companies like OPPO, Meizu, and Xiaomi don't do this sort of thing. By extension to OPPO, I hope OnePlus is clean!
I'm sure Carl and the gang don't want spyware on their phones that Google didn't put there!

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